Archive for the 'Jean Luc Ponty' Tag Under 'Soundcheck' Category

Now this could be interesting, albeit only to Whophiles: Fresh from a U.K. tour sparked by a well-regarded March 25 performance at London's Royal Albert Hall, Roger Daltrey is bringing his revival of the band's 1969 masterpiece Tommy to North America, starting in mid-September in Hollywood (Florida, that is) and landing at Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles on Oct. 19.

Tickets, $40.50-$126, go on sale May 20 at 10 a.m.

That opus isn't the only thing the 67-year-old vocalist will play -- he's promising other Who selections and more. But he does contend that this trek marks the first time the seminal rock opera is being performed in its properly sequenced entirety.

This is a little nit-picky, but stuff like this matters to die-hards: Technically the Who never did precisely that. When they played it live throughout 1969 they regularly left off the sinister "Cousin Kevin," the helpful narrative piece "Sensation," the less important "Welcome" and, biggest loss by far, the tremendous instrumental "Underture." When they toured it again in 1989, they restored the first two but not the latter pair.

Daltrey describes this new show and its visual aspects as “A Tommy Show for today's audience from a different perspective.” That's nice, but for me, more so than whether he can still sing it, the entire enterprise boils down to whether he's got a backing band that can pull off all 10 minutes of "Underture." His group: Scott Deavours on drums, Jon Button on bass, Loren Gold on keys, and on guitar, both Frank Simes and Simon Townshend, younger brother of the visionary who wrote the thing.